For a female element a nut element can principally be considered, i.e. an element having an internal thread, with the shaft part being able to be formed as a piercing section so that a self-piercing nut element is present. The thread does not have to be pre-manufactured but rather could be produced after the attachment of the nut element to a sheet metal part by means of a thread forming or thread cutting screw. The female element can however also be a hollow element with a cylindrical hollow space which serves for the rotatable journaling of a shaft.
Functional elements are known in the prior art in most diverse embodiments. On the one hand there are so-called rivet elements which have a rivet section, which is deformed on attachment to a sheet metal part, in order to form a rivet bead which together with the head part forms a ring-shaped recess for receiving the edge of a hole in a sheet metal part. With that rivet element the functional element is thus deformed on attachment to the sheet metal part. Typical examples for such rivet elements are the NBR bolt elements of the present applicants and the RND nut elements of the present applicants (European patent 1116891). Furthermore, so-called press-in elements are well known in which the element itself is not intentionally deformed on attachment to a sheet metal part but rather the sheet material itself is deformed, in order to bring this into engagement with undercuts of the respective press-in element. Various bolt elements and nut elements are also known here.
The so-called EBF bolts of the present applicants (European patent 678679) can be named as bolt elements and the so-called RSU elements (European patent 759510) of the present applicants can be named as nut elements.